


A thing called regret

by chimosa



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Crack, Ghost!Will, Incorporeal Sex, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:56:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimosa/pseuds/chimosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know what I regret?” Will asked some time later, thoughtful in the shadows.</p>
<p>“I’m sure you’ll tell me whether or not I care to hear it.”</p>
<p>“Perks of being dead,” Will said and Hannibal could hear the good-natured smile in his voice. “I regret I never made a pass at you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A thing called regret

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just need a break from the angst, ya know? And sometimes you start with a silly idea and it turns angsty on you anyway. *sigh*
> 
> Feedback is as appreciated as air conditioning on a hot day

“Really? You don’t think that’s a little obvious?”

Hannibal paused, holding the late Jacob McKinty’s severed arm as we was arranging it next to a similarly severed leg. He tried to ignore the voice, to continue with his work, but a judgmental “tsk” set his teeth on edge. 

“Is there something you wish to say?” Although he meant for it to sound even, unconcerned, the effect was ruined by his clenched jaw.

Will gestured with a translucent hand at the scene Hannibal was setting. “Used car salesman? Charges an arm and a leg? Kind of being too literal with this one, don’t you think? But of course this is your design, far be it for _me_ to impose on your aesthetic-”

There was no other word for it, Hannibal _growled_ his annoyance which only made Will’s insouciant grin grow. Hannibal turned back to his macabre display, but to see it from Will’s perspective made it appear unbearably clumsy. He tried rearranging the limbs, but his heart wasn’t in it now that he lacked the suitable inspiration.

“I still don’t regret killing you,” Hannibal said, trying for menacing but even to his own ears it sounded petulant.

“Don’t worry, you will,” Will said, peering over his shoulder as he took Jacob McKinty’s head between two leather gloved hands and set it on the Grecian pedestal. “I feel like now you’re not even _trying_ -”

Hannibal interrupted his words with a violent gesture but, of course, it only went through the other man, leaving Hannibal with a cold hand and a still-simmering anger. 

Will smirked. 

***

For all that Hannibal had a warped amorality at the best of times, he always tried to tell the truth. It was a game, to choose his words carefully enough to serve his purposes while still remaining honest. Sometimes he found it difficult to be fully honest with himself but he was one of the most sought-after and expensive psychiatrists in Baltimore. He knew a thing or two about the rationalizing human mind  
and he could recognize it whenever his tried to wriggle away from the harsh light of reality. 

The truth of it was, Hannibal _did_ regret killing Will. He regretted it the moment he took up the knife, before he even felt Will’s blood spill warm between his fingers. He regretted watching as the slippery bowels spilled from Will’s stomach and the other man slumped, the look of surprise written bold across his face. He regretted slipping out of the room before the lights and sirens of the calvary arrived, just as he regretted missing Will’s final, gasping breath taken alone in some godforsaken warehouse, just another victim of the as-yet-unidentified Chesapeake Ripper. 

But, too, he knew there was a difference between that slight pang of loss he himself attributed to remorse and the all-consuming grief that others felt. As much as he did regret the whole sordid business, he still was able to wake into the world each morning with a clear conscious, if not clean hands. It didn’t alter his habits, his hungers, or his pursuits one whit. Whatever he regretted in the part he played in Will’s death, it was more than justified by the fact that Hannibal _had_ in the end outsmarted the other man. He had proved the victor, and the evidence was in every breath he drew in, every beat of his heart, every meal he consumed. Hannibal lived and Will did not and life went on.

He did not factor in Will’s unrelenting obstinance, which in retrospect seemed like an egregious error. Hannibal might have lived and Will might have died, but that wasn’t necessarily going to be the end of it. 

***

“I have these longings, I just feel this pull... does that make me a, you know...” The patient trailed off, looking at Hannibal with wide, trusting eyes. 

“If you were,” Hannibal said, careful to keep the boredom out of his voice. “How would that make you feel?”

Will snorted derisively at Hannibal’s words. His patient continued to talk, but Will’s words effectively drowned him out. “You are off your game. _How would that make you feel?_ Why not ask him about his relationship with his father while you’re at it? Maybe get him to lay back on a sofa and talk about his latent sexual desires for his mother, interpret his dreams, really go for the full textbook experience.”

Hannibal didn’t need to look up to see the grey legs swinging casually down from the mezzanine. It had become Will’s favorite perch whenever Hannibal was in his office, to sit with his legs jutting through the safety railing, the metal bars like teeth where they bisected Will’s ghostly body. 

“I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today,” Hannibal murmured as he offered the sobbing patient a tissue. 

“Over a hundred an hour, and that’s all you can offer the poor guy? A Kleenex? For the same price you gave me wine, fed me, _and_ fed my dogs. I’m starting to think you _liked_ me, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal walked his patient out the private exit, ignoring the taunts with a rigidly stiff back and an upturned nose. 

“Oh, look- it’s your aloof look. That’s something completely new and different.”

Hannibal slammed the door closed with a bit more force than usual, and the sound of laughter came floating down, as cold and bracing as freshly falling snow. 

***  
“Have you always had that mole?” Will asked as Hannibal undressed for the evening. He could feel an icy touch as Will tapped the offending mark on his shoulder. “You really should get that looked into. Skin cancer would be a pretty anticlimactic way to go, after everything you’ve done.”

When Hannibal stayed resolutely silent, Will raised his hands in surrender. “Of course, it’s your body, your choices. Though if it _is_ skin cancer and you leave it untreated, that just means you get to join me that much sooner. Which could be fun.”

“I don’t regret killing you,” Hannibal said, the first time he had acknowledge Will that day. 

“You just keep telling yourself that,” Will replied as Hannibal flicked the night lamp off. He could feel Will watching him through the darkness and it set his teeth on edge even as he felt the faint stirrings of lust that had been building steadily since the moment Will’s fingertip had touched his skin. His own body was beginning to betray him now, and Hannibal pulled the sheets up to his chin in disgust. 

“You know what I regret?” Will asked some time later, thoughtful in the shadows.

“I’m sure you’ll tell me whether or not I care to hear it.”

“Perks of being dead,” Will said and Hannibal could hear the good-natured smile in his voice. “I regret I never made a pass at you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I feel like we could have had some really incredible sex. You, with that repressed European thing you’ve got going on, hiding all those raw, animalistic urges. And me, half out of my mind most of the time? I think we could have had some really intense, boundary-pushing sex. Lots of teeth and power dynamics and bruises we’d have to cover up the next day.”

Hannibal’s body, traitorous thing that it was, responded to Will’s words. He was hard now, his cock straining against the smooth silk of his pajamas.

“I’m sure I’d let you fuck me,” Will mused. “I’ve never done it before, but it would feel appropriate to let you, somehow. To give myself to you when you already controlled so much in my life. Or maybe you’d let me do you- riding my body, using me for your own pleasure.”

And Hannibal could see it now, could imagine crowding Will’s body with his own, filling the spaces between until not even the slightest sliver of light could penetrate the lines of their skin. He would be brutal, demanding, but Will in all his empathic glory would match him; bite for bite, gasping breath for gasping breath, until not even Hannibal could tell the reflection from the desire. 

His hand slid under the sheets and found himself hard and already wet with pearling ejaculate. He thumbed the slit of his cock, spread the wetness across his sensitive tip as Will’s voice dripped like honey into his ear.

“I’d be so _hungry_ for it, for all the things I never knew I even wanted. For your hands pressing bruises into my throat until my vision started to white out, for the air you would feed me from your own mouth until my lungs felt like they would burst. I would be yours to control, utterly at your mercy, as you fucked me into the mattress.”

Hannibal’s hand was working faster now, his pace matching Will’s words beat for beat.

“We would be at it for long enough that I could taste the difference between my blood and yours on my tongue. I’d rend the skin of your back with my fingernails, and as you sweat you’d feel the sting of it and know you were being claimed as mine.”

It was a sweet agony, to hear the familiar voice saying such filthy things and knowing that no matter how much he wished for Will’s touch, he only had himself to blame.

“It would be a competition, to see who could make the other come first. Of course it would be, we have been nothing but a test of wills since the moment we met and this wouldn’t be any different. An hour would go by and still we’d be at it, pulling at hair, clawing at skin. We’d fight off everything that was telling us to let go, to become lost in pleasure, because that would be like giving up.” 

He was close, so close now, he could feel the looming precipice even as his hand worked his cock with tight twists that left him wet and gasping. A coldness descended, and Will’s presence was like plunging into an ice-covered lake. He gritted his teeth against the excruciating chill that wrapped around his cock, the pain quickly reverting into pleasure too good and he couldn’t last- wasn’t going to last-

“Come on, do it,” Will said as Hannibal relinquished himself to the cold that stank of death. “I want to see you, at my mercy. I want to see what you look like when you give it all up.”

Hannibal came, biting his own fist as he tried to smother the cries that rose unbidden from his lungs. He could feel his back curve away from the sweat sodden mattress as he spilled his gratification. Blood pounded in his temples and it was a lazy journey back to himself that left his limbs as heavy as a freshly dead corpse’s.

Will was sitting on the mattress’ edge, turned away from where Hannibal lay and it took some effort to decipher his words through the ringing of his ears.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. Even if I had realized I wanted you before it was too late, it wouldn’t have changed anything. We were never going to end up anywhere other than where we are now. With one of us dead. Even if I had gotten that call out to Jack in time, even if you had been sent to prison, we both know that still wouldn’t be the end of it.”

Will raised his hand and stared at it in wonder, as his misty skin faded even more until it was just the barest trace of vapor.

“Look,” he said, transfixed, and Hannibal could see through the darkness as Will’s body receded into the shadows, and he knew in his bones that this was the last time he would ever see the other man. He sat up, reaching for him, but he was too late. The air was no different from the rest of the room’s now that the chill of Will’s presence was gone.

Hannibal sat in the dark, while in his gut he felt the first churning of a thing called regret.


End file.
